


Slant  (1946-1958)

by fabfemmeboy



Series: Immutability and Other Sins [8]
Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, Period-Typical Racism, References to anti-Semitism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 13:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13032435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabfemmeboy/pseuds/fabfemmeboy
Summary: Living in the shadow of wars and flags, the real battles were always over food and normalcy.





	1. Chapter 1

From the time she was old enough to pay attention, every fight Tina Chang could remember her parents having involved food.  
   
In a way, it was probably inevitable; taking an Americanized Jew whose family dishes all had a decidedly German and Polish lack of flare, and an Americanized Korean who had been raised with kimchi at every meal, and there were destined to be arguments over who ate what and on which holidays. Actually, holidays were almost easy if only because there was so little overlap. There was no traditional Korean sidedish for Chanukkah. It was when the question of daily staples came up that the real arguments started.  
   
Some were easily solved: it was simple enough to alternate between potatoes and rice, and everyone could agree on stew...in theory, at least, there were always arguments about precisely which spices should be used on the beef. But on bigger questions, there were more involved fights.  She always wondered if it was because they were both second-generation - like they were connected to their people but only through food somehow.  Like the real battles had already been fought, and the dust had settled, and all that was left to argue over was noodle dishes.  
   
Her parents had lived in California before the War, in a part of town with a mix of people so that neither parent was ensconced in their own personal enclave, but after Pearl Harbour...  
  
Her father was the first to proclaim to anyone who would listen that he wasn't Japanese, he was Korean.  That his father had served during the Great War in a maintenance unit based out of Long Island, fixing planes for the First Aviation Squadron where the first Marine Corps pilots trained to fly in-theater because he wasn't allowed to serve in-combat.  The difference fell on deaf ears in a fervor of anti-Asian hysteria where everyone with narrow eyes was viewed with suspicion.  He even tried to enlist, to defend the country he loved like a few of his cousins did, but his strong glasses prescription and flat feet kept him out.    
  
There were posters that went up in the neighbourhood, in the place where it had felt like everyone could just live side-by-side without incident.  They described the difference between Chinese and Japanese people, how to tell the difference based on face shape and nose shape and the thickness of their beards-  
  
He was somewhere in between, he had lamented as he stared at the posters in disgust.  What did that make him except untrustworthy?  
  
When the evacuation order came down against the Japanese, he saw the writing on the wall:  How long until they decided he was the enemy, too?  And then what?  If no one could tell what he was, then surely it was only a matter of time until that scared them enough to take action.    
  
The problem, he had concluded in early 1942, was that they lived near the coast.  Asians in the rest of the country - even Japanese - weren't being sent away because they were far enough from the danger zone.  If they just left the coast, then maybe...  
  
Tina was born at Beth Israel Hospital in Indianapolis five months after her parents' move.  The nurses had apparently commented on her unusual first name - most baby girls born there had names like Sarah or Rebecca or Rachel or Ruth, or increasingly Deborah or Ethel or Esther - but her parents weren't swayed.  She wasn't just Jewish, and they hardly lived in an enclave: she was American just like anyone else.  A week later, her father had sat in the back of the synagogue during her naming ceremony, fumbling his way through the service and unable to be called for  _aliyah_.  
  
They moved to Lima when Tina was six.  She doesn't remember much from Indianapolis, just the old apartment and her room with the faded pink flower wallpaper, and the synagogue on the corner where she spent Saturday mornings with her mother, and the library two blocks away where her father took her on Sundays, with its big volumes of fairytales that he read her as soon as they got home.    
  
And she remembers people looking at her funny.  
  
She never understood why at the time.  It didn't make her feel ashamed, and she already hated meeting new people - she was so shy that, if she'd had her way, she would have stayed in her room with her giant book and tracing her fingers over the illustrations of hideous witches in flowing black cloaks and princesses with long, golden hair and wide blue eyes so unlike her own.  So maybe she just  _felt_  like everyone was staring at her because she burned under the gaze of everyone but her parents and the neighbours they knew especially well.  But it certainly seemed like everyone looked at her.  
  
She learned later that it had been a big compromise, the move to Ohio - her dad wanted to live somewhere that he didn't stand out so much. He missed the smell of kimchi and the boys flying kites and women in  _hanbok_  for Korean New Year.  He missed seeing people who looked like him - men on their way to and from work, and women tugging along children who looked like his daughter, and store clerks and people in newspapers.  He missed things being the way they had been when he was growing up, where although the children all spoke English they knew clearly they were Korean.  So he wanted to move to somewhere they could be among people like them- well, like him in particular...and through the grapevine he heard about an Asian enclave in Lima.    
  
But her mother, it turned out, had not been so easily swayed.  She didn't mind moving, and she didn't even dislike the choice of location - especially not once she saw the ranch house they could afford and how much bigger and nicer it was than the apartment, with a state-of-the-art kitchen and a picture window overlooking the front yard.  What bothered her was the inequality: if her husband got to reconnect to his people, she should get something in return.  
  
What Tina remembers about it is that she wasn't allowed to eat cheeseburgers anymore.  
  
"But they're good!" she protested angrily.  She wasn't any less angry when her mother explained that the new rules also included no milkshakes with hamburgers, and no sausage or bacon with breakfast, and no lasagna from the Italian restaurant they had passed a few times in town.    
  
Her father had a different complaint.  "What do you mean, no shrimp?"  
  
And just like that, the seafood pancakes were gone.  Same with every casserole except for some reason tuna noodle, which wasn't even her favourite.  Tina wasn't sure what this Kosher thing was, but she knew she hated it, especially once she started school.  All the other kids could buy lunch in the cafeteria if they wanted, but not Tina because she couldn't have any meat for at least six hours after breakfast, and lunchtime was at 12:30 - breakfast was at 8.  The lunchboxes and brown paper bags carried by some of the other kids even had sandwiches with ham and cheese - she loved ham and cheese.  But now she was stuck with peanut butter and jelly every single day because of rules she didn't understand and didn't like that all had something to do with moving to the new house.  
  
Sometimes, on the way home from the library with her father, they would stop somewhere and eat food that her mother didn't approve of; it was her favourite time of the week - not only because she got to eat a cheeseburger, or a plate of spaghetti with meatballs bigger than her fist and topped with a huge pile of parmesean cheese, or if it was still early enough to get brunch then bacon and eggs and french toast...but because sharing a secret with him felt grown-up. Important.    
  
"Come on, Dad," she urged one Sunday, tugging his hand in the direction of the diner.  They had stayed a little longer than usual, so she was starving by the time they walked through the crowded streets of downtown.  Everyone else was dressed up from church, and while she had no idea what exactly they did in there, she knew that practically everyone she knew went on Sunday.  Her father had tried to tell her once it was just like going to synagogue on Saturday, except a different day and in a different language. She suspected it was Cantonese; it could be Mandarin, because some people in school spoke that - she had no idea what the difference was, since to her they both sounded like a jumble of nonsense words, but she was the only person she knew who didn't know one or the other.  Well, aside from her parents.    
  
"Not today, Tina."  
  
"But it's late, and we always do.  Please?"  
  
He shook his head.  "I shouldn't take you anymore.  It's disrespectful to your mother, going behind her back like this.  What she says, goes - the same as any rule I make."  
  
"But her rules don't make any sense!  Six hours to dinner?  Why six, why not five or seven or twenty-two?  And why is tuna casserole okay but no other casserole?  And why-"  
  
"Tina."  Her father was a softspoken man, so when his voice took a sharp edge like that, she knew he was serious.    
  
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.  She guessed the questions were backtalk, and she hadn't meant to, but it was so frustrating - having to do things and not knowing why all the time.  
  
He nodded, then thought a moment and turned the corner, walking toward her school instead of toward home.  Three streets over from the main street in town was a block with a few other restaurants, including one that smelled like home.  Her father opened the door to that one, and once they were shown to a table he began to try to explain.  "I know her rules don't make sense to us.  But they make sense to her, and what's important is that we not break them."  
  
"Why did she make them that way?"  
  
"Well...she didn't," he tried to explain.  
  
"Of course she did."  
  
"No, not really.  You know how there are things we do on holidays, and when you ask why, we say it's because it's tradition?"  Tina nodded - there were a lot of those.  She knew the story for some of the holidays, she knew that a little oil lasted a long time and that was why they lit candles; she knew once a year they had to eat those disgusting crackers because Jews ran away from slavery quickly.  But so many other things - the funny tops during Channukkah, and the kites for New Years, and why New Years didn't come on January 1 for them like it did for other people - her parents would simply tell her that it was tradition.  That they did these things because the people before them had done these things, and the people before them, and so forth.  "It's like a tradition for your mother."  
  
"Then why didn't we always do it?"  
  
"Because she let some of her traditions go for awhile, because of me.  But she decided it was important to do them again, so she is."  
  
"What do you mean, because of you?"  
  
Her father paused a moment before he spoke, looking thoughtful behind his thick glasses, and when he finally began he had a worried expression on his face, as though something had occurred to him that concerned him.  "When you grow up one day and find a nice boy to fall in love with-"  She made a face, because the boys at her school were horrible.  All the girls thought so.  Her father laughed softly.  "One day.  When you come together with someone, sometimes...sometimes you have different traditions.  Your mother and I have very different traditions. More different than most people."  
  
"Why?"   
  
"Because I'm Korean, and your mother's Jewish."  
  
"What's that mean?"  
  
"Jewish means people who go to a synagogue, and Korean means people whose family come from a certain place."  
  
Tina thought a moment before nodding and replying, "So I'm Jewish.  Because I go with Mom."  
  
"And Korean, too.  See how you look like me?"  
  
She did, she knew.  Everyone said she looked like her father - people in grocery stores, and parents at school even though they all looked like her father, too, even the mailman.  They had the same eyes and the same dark black hair; her mom had green eyes and brown hair and it was curly.  "So I'm both?"  
  
"You're both," he confirmed with a nod.  
  
"But you said she stopped and then started again.  So when I grow up, can't I just pick my own traditions?  We can eat cheeseburgers - everyone except Mom likes cheeseburgers."  
  
Her father chuckled softly to himself.  "If that's what you want, then yes.  That's part of what it means to be American."  
  
She knew about being American.  They talked about that in school, and what they were supposed to think about when they put their hands over their hearts and said the Pledge of Allegiance.  "So I can be all three?"  
  
Her father looked sad all of a sudden for reasons she wouldn't understand for many years - not until an assignment in high school required that she ask all her relatives what they remembered about Pearl Harbour and she learned why her family had left California for the Midwest in the first place.  But at all of 7, all she knew was that he fiddled with his glasses which he almost never did unless something bothered him, and he didn't speak for a long time; when he did, his voice was quiet and sad.  "Yes, sweetheart.  You're all three."  
  
* * * * *  
Tina's mother had been born just two years before Bess Myerson and cried when the New Yorker won Miss America.  She had been raised in a small but thriving Jewish enclave in LA, the result of people migrating from New York to work in the motion picture industry, where the ability of Jewish Americans to do anything and everything was celebrated.  It wasn't just a sense within the community, either - she got the message at home, where her parents relayed the messages from their parents about the promise of America.  This wasn't like Poland, they told her over and over again; she would have to work hard to get what she wanted, but it wouldn't be impossible.  That was what made the country great - especially in the 1920s.  
  
Of course, they hadn't known so much.  Protected in their little Semitic bubble, in a neighbourhood with three synagogues where the biggest fight was over whether those new Reform Jews were really Jews at all (they didn't keep Kosher!  They didn't even cover their heads, and they let their women study Torah), no one thought much of the world beyond.  They didn't need to.  It wasn't until her grandmother - Tina's great-grandmother - began getting frantic letters from the old country, begging for money (which was never done), pleading for some sort of gaming of the political system to try and get the rest of the family out of Poland and to America, telling stories of synagogues being vandalized and Torah scrolls being burned...  
  
They had tried to no avail.  The only comfort of finding out after the fact that not a single aunt, uncle, cousin, or friend remained out of the entire extended family, was the fact that at least they were in a place where that could never happen.  America wasn't Poland; it wasn't Germany.  There were reasons that part of the family had chosen to emigrate, including a lengthy history of antisemitism that hardly began in 1933.  They clung to that fact, even as all of the gruesome images came home with American GI's, even as stories of unparalleled brutality were retold.  
  
At least it couldn't happen here.  Americans might not be perfect, they might not act quickly enough to save their fellow human being, but at the very least they knew that the Jewish people weren't responsible for all the country's ills.  
  
The Rosenbergs were convicted when Tina was 9.  She knows because she was trying to figure out what her science fair project should be when her mother came in with the curtains.  The fourth grade science fair was a big deal because it was the first one; before that, the teachers didn't trust students to create anything big or impressive enough to be worth talking about, but in fourth grade for some reason that changed.  Everyone else was looking forward to it, but Tina wasn't.  It was her worst subject, for one thing, and as she sat at the kitchen table she contemplated just how much she could get away without talking when she presented it.  Every student had to get up -  _in front of everyone_  - and talk about what they had done, but maybe if she made something that showed itself, she wouldn't have to.  Or what if she invented something that talked for her, like a robot?    
  
She was in the middle of drawing an elaborate picture of a robot that would win her the fair, if only she could build it which she couldn't, when her mother plopped an armful of black fabric onto the table and continued quickly into the next room.  Before she could ask what it was, her father entered, following her mother through the kitchen toward the living room.  "Bess, you're being irrational.  Calm down."  
  
"It's not irrational."  
  
"You're blowing this out of proportion."  Her father's voice was even, almost patronizing as her mother whisked back into the room holding her seamstress tape.    
  
"It's the lead story on the news, James."  
  
"Yes, today.  The trial just ended.  It will pass."  
  
"He blamed us for the entire war.  For the single largest problem in the country."  
  
"Why are you saying 'us'?  He blamed th-"  
  
"Not us," she replied sharply, slamming the tape down onto the fabric with a dull rustle.  She gave him a pointed look.  " _You're_  fine."  She grabbed the tape up again, then paused and just gathered the entire armful of fabric, carrying it into the living room.  Tina stood and followed her father to the next room in time to see her mother drop the heavy black cloth in front of the picture window.  She rustled through for a moment before coming up with the end of the yardage, then she held it up to the edge of the window and began to measure her way across in fabric, pressing and smoothing the black along the window from right to left.  
  
"Honey, please."    
  
"It's the safest-"  
  
"We don't need it."  He emphasized the word 'we', and even though Tina didn't know what in the world the argument was about or what her mom was worried about, she could guess what the 'us' versus 'you' versus 'me' thing was.  It was the same thing it always was - something about Jewishness or being Asian, and next thing you knew there was some new tradition to look at or some new rule to follow.  She just really hoped this one meant no more peanuts because if she had to keep eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch every day of every year at school, she was going to go crazy.  
  
"Yes we do."  
  
"Bess-"  
  
" _Yes_.  We do."  Her mother's tone sharpened at being contradicted.  She glared at the fabric as she doubled the length she had measured, then reached into the nearest drawer for a pair of scissors to cut the length.  "It's the only way to be safe."  
  
There was silence for a long moment before her father asked very quietly, "This is really scaring you, isn't it?"  She looked up at him with anger and contempt, as if the next words that were going to fly out of her mouth would be about how he never listened to her and couldn't he hear what she was saying, but he crossed to stand over her and her pile of black.  "We can go, you know," he said softly, kneeling beside her.  "I know I said when the trial began that I didn't want to pick Tina up and move again, but if it would make you feel better..."  
  
Tina wanted to ask if she got a vote in it because she  _really_  didn't want to move again.  Sure, she didn't really talk to anyone in her classes and she spent most of the time afraid to really approach anyone and glad that the second-language-gap at school kept kids away from her for the most part, but that didn't mean she wanted to  _leave_.  But this was bigger than her and her shyness.  
  
"We can go to New York.  Or back to California - things have calmed down."  
  
"For now," she replied with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head as she began to fold the piece of fabric she had just cut and moved to the side window to repeat the process with the remainder of the cloth.  "It's a war, honey, and you know this 'cold war' business won't stay for long.  This time you really would be the enemy."  
  
"We can move somewhere with more Jewish people-"  
  
She laughed bitterly.  "If the war taught us anything, it's that we're easier to round up that way.  Besides, what about the two of you then?  You'll stand out too much.  Here...they may not always trust me, but they don't  _distrust_  me.  I'm just trying to make sure it stays that way."  
  
"By putting up blackout curtains like you're preparing for a bombing raid?  Doesn't that arouse more suspicion?"  
  
"That's not why," she replied but offered no further explanation as she whisked off to the sewing room, mumbling about how many pins she would need for this hem..    
  
It wasn't until Friday afternoon that Tina found out why.    
  
When she arrived home after school, the house smelled incredible - cooked beef and carrots and fresh-baked bread which she didn't think she had ever seen her mother make before except maybe one year for Korean New Year when she said "It's just what you do for New Years" as they eagerly dug into the round, honey-sweetened loaf.  There were candlesticks on the table and the good china.  "Who's coming over?" she asked as she hung up her coat.  
  
"No one," her mother replied.  "What makes you ask that?"  
  
"The fancy plates," she replied.  
  
"No, just the three of us," her mother stated, and surely enough the place settings accounted only for their places.    
  
"Then what's the occasion?"  
  
"Shabbat."  
  
Of course it was Shabbat.  It was Shabbat every Friday and Saturday, that was why they went to synagogue in the morning.  Her clothes were probably already pressed and hanging from her doorknob like they were most Friday afternoons so they wouldn't need to waste time getting out the door tomorrow.  Since when did that mean fresh bread?  
  
"Yes, but...why?"  
  
"Because this is what we should have been doing all along, and I want to start."  
  
"Like Kosher?" she asked, trying not to make a face.  This was going to mean more rules, and there were enough of them already.    
  
"Yes."  Her mother paused to consider the contents of the large pot on the stove, then added a few more pieces of onion from the cutting board.  "Go start your homework.  I want you to have most of it done before dinner."  
  
It was a strange request, because while Tina often tried to get her homework done early, that wasn't always the case.  Sometimes she had dance or singing lessons right after school, and two afternoons a week she had Hebrew School which went until dinnertime, so a lot of the time she did her homework immediately after dinner while her mother cleaned up and her father watched the end of the evening news.   But lacking any true reason to say no, and knowing that even if she had a valid excuse it wouldn't fly with her mother, she simply carried her bag to her bedroom where she began to try, as she had all week, to figure out a way to get out of the wretched science fair.  
  
By the time her mother called her for dinner an hour later, her bedroom was already beginning to fade from pink into the darker purple of evening.  Flicking off her desk lamp, she walked out to find the living room nearly sheathed in darkness.  The black curtains her mother had sewn and installed a few nights earlier were drawn, leaving the room black and ominous but for the faint peeking in through the window in the kitchen door.  The candles on the table were unlit, and Tina felt like the only way she would be able to find her way to the table was by following the smell.  She could tell her father was there mostly from the tiny glint of light off his glasses.  "Mom, the curtains make it so dark in here, why don't we open-"  
  
"No," she replied as sharply as if Tina had been about to put her hand on the hot stove.  "They have to stay closed so no one sees."  
  
"Why can't anyone see? We're just eating dinner."  
  
"I'll explain later."  She picked up the small clock that rested most days on the table beside the sofa, tilting it toward the kitchen door so she could read the time.  "Let's start now."  
  
The ritual was strange enough in and of itself, as her mother tied a scarf around her head and instantly transformed herself into someone who looked like the photographs of the Jewish side of the family - the short women who wore shapeless overcoats and triangles of fabric over their hair that tied beneath the chin as they stood next to their husbands with their thick dark beards - before beginning to recite a blessing Tina felt like she should recognize but couldn't quite place.  With a flick of the match, the flame partially illuminated the darkened kitchen, and as her mother lit the two candles Tina looked over at her father.  Maybe he had any idea what was going on and why.  Maybe he knew why her mother was closing her eyes and waving her hands in front of the candles (which just seemed like a dangerous idea) and mumbling.  Maybe she'd done this before and Tina just didn't remember it, even though she thought she would remember this strange way of marking a Friday night.  He looked just as confused as she felt, and more worried.  Tina opened her mouth to ask, but her father raised his hand and shook his head, so she fell silent and stared as her mother began to focus her attention on the bread.  
  
By the time her mother finally sat down in her usual place, removed her scarf, and said with a bright smile, "Let's eat," Tina was beyond confused.  Washing their hands at the table even once was strange, but her mother made them do it three times, and the bread smelled delicious but was disgusting when dipped in salt, and dinner just sat there ready but they couldn't eat for what felt like an hour.  She had no idea how long it really was; she couldn't make out the clock in the candlelight.  
  
"Mom?  What's going on?"   
  
"What do you mean?" her mom asked, her fork poised over her plate.  
  
"This is all really strange.  It's Shabbat every week, but we never do this.  So what's the real reason?"  
  
"That is the real reason," she stated.  
  
"I think what she's asking," her father began diplomatically, "is why this is something we're doing for Shabbat  _now_."  He gave her a pointed look, and Tina got the feeling her parents hadn't talked about this.  At least with keeping Kosher, even if her father didn't like it and cheated with the rules all the time, they had talked about it first.  This was different.  This was out of the blue in so many ways.  
  
"We should have been doing it a long time ago."  
  
"Maybe, but we didn't," Tina replied.  
  
"Bess, what's going on?"  
  
"Nothing," she replied in a way that, when directed at Tina, always meant Tina had failed to do something that was a Big Disappointment to her mother.  It was the tone that was often followed by "It's fine" when her mother thought it was anything but.  
  
"Is it because of the Rosenbergs?"  
  
It was the first time Tina had heard the name spoken in their house, and her mother flinched, setting her fork down hard on the china plate with a clatter.   Her face tightened at the direct question, and her eyes narrowed as she looked at her husband and replied with a cold, "Of course not."  
  
"Because I understand that you're upset, but eating dinner in the dark-"  
  
"It's not, James.  It's about redemption."  
  
"What have you done wrong?"  
  
"Not personal redemption.  This is larger than me."  Tina had no idea what her mother meant by that, if only because what kind of redemption did a person have by eating dinner in the dark?  "Our homeland belongs to us again, at least part of it, but there are a lot of people who say we shouldn't be there - Rabbis who think we're going against everything God said about the return from exile.  They say it isn't meant to happen until the Jewish people are ready, and one way is that everyone has to observe Shabbat properly."  
  
"So you think that the reason the Rosenbergs were convicted of treason for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union is because Jews are being punished because you in particular haven't been observing Shabbat," her father summarized dryly.  
  
"No," she replied irritably, because when it was put like that it did sound ridiculous.  "Yes.  I don't know - does it matter? Why shouldn't we be doing it anyway?  Aren't we better safe than sorry?  What does it hurt to do this?"  
  
"We're sitting in the dark like it's 1890!"  
  
"It's a festive meal."  
  
"It looks like we're about to start telling ghost stories," Tina interjected (not that it was a bad thing), and the look both her parents shot her told her it was not a welcome or helpful contribution.  She stabbed at a carrot frustratedly while her parents kept up their 'festive' conversation.  She didn't understand any of it - if her mother wanted to do more traditions, why didn't she just do them?  Why did she put black curtains over everything?  And if she was scared of anyone knowing she was Jewish, why didn't she just blend in more and not put more and more weird rules on them?    
  
Why did it sound like her mother didn't know the answer to those questions either as her father asked?  
  
"I'm done talking about this," she stated firmly as she speared a bite of the tender beef.  "Shabbat is about peace.  It's meant to be like a holiday every week.  No one fights at the holidays."  
  
The rest of the meal was consumed in silence.  Tina wondered if that was what was meant by the 'peace' part; she would've rather had chatter and electricity.


	2. Chapter 2

Her boyfriend's mother never liked her.  
   
Mike was a great boy – he was kind, and he liked dance even more than she did. They had been in ballet together since she had moved to town, and she always felt a frisson of excitement when she watched him dance. He was so graceful, so light on his feet, so emotional when he danced – unlike most of the boys who looked like they were concentrating too hard to ever get lost in the music the way she did.   
   
Their first kiss was after class when they were 15. They were the last two to help clean up the room, and as they dragged out the mats to set up for the youth tumbling class that would use the room next, there was a moment when they just stopped, the entire world melting away except for the two of them and soft classical music on the record player. She practically threw herself into his arms, and he caught her, pulling her closer as he kissed her like he'd been waiting to do that for years. She had felt like she might fall, her knees buckling under her from the intensity of it all, but with his strong arms encircling her...  
   
She walked around with a dreamy smile for the better part of two weeks, unable to think of anything about his sweet smile and the way he moved and the way his arms felt around her as they kissed.   
   
Twelve days after they started dating, she was walking down the hall toward her tap class as she passed Mike's kung fu class. The all-boys class wore only trousers, and she had often watched as girls stopped by the door to peer through the small window and giggle, hands in front of their mouths, eyes wide and vaguely scandalized – then the inevitable blushing scurry away from the door as the boys would catch them. Tina had never really understood their fascination until, in passing, she caught sight of Mike. Her boyfriend was close to the door, and as he moved smoothly through the combination, his grace even more evident there than when he danced flawlessly across the ballet studio, she could see the perfect outline of his muscles, the slope of his toned biceps, the smooth planes of his back, his flawless, chiseled abdominal muscles...  
   
She suddenly understood why the girls stopped here and left blushing, as she felt her cheeks flush hot and she clutched her books tighter to her chest. And she had a feeling she knew now why so many of the girls had been sending jealous looks her way since they found out she and Mike were dating.  
   
He wasn't self-absorbed like the other boys at school were, either, and he tried to make sure she was interested in whatever it was they were doing.   
   
...except when his mother was concerned.  
   
Tina was used to the closer-than-close relationship most of the families in town had. For one thing, it went along with respecting one's elders, which was a bigger deal in other families than in her own and one of the constant sources of frustration her dad had with popular American culture. For another, if the Asian community was closely-knit, then families were so tight that the members were practically inseparable from one-another.   
   
It was bad enough when she wouldn't let them be in the living room by themselves, but that wasn't that strange. Her own mom didn't allow that, either. But her own mom never tried to chaperon their dates.  
   
When they went for their first date – dim sum on Sunday morning, after Mike's family went to church – she thought it was partially a matter of convenience. The entire extended Chang brood was there...well, his branch of it, anyway...and it meant they could at least see each other before Monday. Nevermind that they had just seen each other at Chinese School on Saturday afternoon, after Tina got back from synagogue – she couldn't wait to see him. She would deal with the bunch of relatives gossiping in Cantonese while she caught only bits and pieces of words she had learned in class if it meant getting to stare at Mike across the table and watching as he snagged her a steamed bun without prompting.  
   
By their third date – dim sum on Saturday morning with Mike's mom, which came only three days after their second date – dinner with Mike's mom at the larger of the two Hunan  restaurants in the neighbourhood – the novelty had worn off.  
   
As he walked her to Chinese School afterward, she was amazed they were left alone unsupervised. “What are you doing next Friday?” he asked as he slipped her books easily out of her arms and carried them at his side.   
   
“I don't know,” she replied noncommittally. “Why?”  
   
She wanted to ask him to take her out to dinner. She wanted to ask him to take her to a drive-in, to see a movie – the new Debbie Reyolds movie was out, and even though she wore a lot more black than most people considered normal and dressed in whatever interesting turn-of-the-century finds she could get her hands on, she really was kind of a romantic. She liked sweet stories of the girl getting the boy, of two people who shouldn't be together finding one another and falling breathlessly in love as the music swelled behind them. She loved romance – not dark, twisted, Edgar Allan Poe kind of romance where the couple can never be together except in a coffin, like everyone thought, but real, true, unable to stop smiling kind of love that made her feel lighter than air.   
   
She couldn't be that forward, not like some of the girls she knew. But Mike understood her, and he liked to be interested in the things she was interested in, so surely he would know-  
   
“Would you like to go out to dinner?”  
   
Her heart leapt a little – he'd never asked it that way before, maybe it meant they could go out- “Just the two of us?” Mike looked at her like it was a strange question to ask. “We always go out to eat with your mom.”  
   
“Not always,” he tried to protest.  
   
“We've been on three dates and all three of them, she was there. I want to go to a drive-in, or get burgers at the diner, or go to Breadstix – they have salads at Breadstix, and neverending pasta? But every time we go out it's for food with your mom – dim sum with your mom and Chinese dinner with your mom and just once I want to go somewhere that serves normal food and doesn't include your mom!”  
   
Mike stared at her, surprised both by what she said and how vehemently she said it. “I thought you liked going out with me.”  
   
He looked so dejected, so worried, as though he honestly thought that her frustration meant that she didn't like him – and she  _did_ , she liked him so much she felt like she could cry because she was just that happy when she saw him – but she didn't know how to express any of that. “I do,” she said hurriedly, her voice quivering. “I do – I  _do_ , Mike, you're amazing. But we never get to-...and she just-...and I don't speak-”  
   
“I'll talk to her,” Mike replied, seeing how upset she was. “If it means this much, we can go out just the two of us.” He took her hand and gave her a quick kiss.  He never kissed her in front of his mom.  See what they were missing, just by never being allowed alone together?  Didn't he at least want that much?  
  
She knew that he liked her - even as graceful as Mike was, she could tell it wasn't easy for him to hold the door open for her while juggling both of their books, but he did it.  And he let her take the spotlight in dance that week, which was at once terrifying and moving.  And he offered to help her with her homework for Chinese school when he saw she was struggling.  She would have felt worse about it, because she was smart and their school frowned upon girls who played dumb to get boys to help them, but he had spoken Cantonese with his family his entire life.  She hadn't even gone to Chinese School until she was 12 and her mother decided that at least if she was also in that people might look at her less strangely for going to Hebrew School.  She might blend in better, her mother had said.  That was back before her father had finally convinced her mother to take down the black curtains on the windows; she still acted like the Gestapo - or the FBI -  were watching through the living room window when she lit candles on Friday, but at least there was more light to eat by.  
  
Which was why she was surprised when, on Wednesday after math class, he walked over with a dejected expression.  "I can't go out with you on Friday."  
  
She tried not to panic.  She tried to assure herself that he looked sad, so surely it wasn't that he was breaking their date to go out with another girl, even though she knew there were a lot of girls who were after him.  "Oh," she said slowly.  "Why not?"  
  
"My mom won't let me.  She says she doesn't know you well enough."  
  
"What is that supposed to mean?  What does she think I'm going to do?"  she demanded.  His mom thought she was the wrong kind of girl?  Or that she was secretly a black widow girlfriend?  Why did everyone think that   
  
"I don't know.  She's worried.  But I thought maybe..."  He took her hand and looked her in the eye as he leaned against the locker next to hers.  "One more dinner with my mom.  She can get to know you better, and then we can go out like you want.  Because I really like you."  
  
She felt her cheeks bloom red as she looked down at her books, trying not to seem as flustered as Mike made her feel.  When she looked up at him, he was wearing a shy smile and looking at her like he was afraid he was going to lose her over this, and how could she not agree to that?  "One more dinner," she repeated with a soft smile, and he beamed, a broad grin spreading across his face.  She leaned up to kiss him, almost giggling and crying all at once because how did she get this lucky?  He was such an incredible guy, and she was the girl who didn't talk to anyone unless she had to and spent most of her time hanging out in a practice room with a piano or a dance studio-  She rose up on her toes further, wrapping her hand around the back of Mike's neck to pull him closer to her - or herself closer to him, she wasn't really sure (and did it matter?)-  
  
The exaggerated throat-clearing noise from Mr. Yang, the practically-elderly science teacher who wore bowties and comically large glasses and who opened his mouth wider than a python's when he spoke about the good old days when dinosaurs roamed the earth, before modern conveniences like electricity bothered them, made Tina pull back to see practically everyone in the school staring at them.  
  
Of course, with the tiny and tightknit community they lived in, Mike's mom knew about the incident before dinner on Friday.  She had probably known before Mike even got home that day, and judging by the way Mike had looked sheepish every time their eyes had met on Thursday.  It was a tiny part of town with a bunch of little old ladies who had nothing better to do than sit around and talk about how the younger girls behaved and how none of them were good enough for their princes of sons and grandsons.  The cold glare Mrs. Chang gave her when she arrived at the restaurant on Friday made obvious how the woman felt about her; the pasted-on, tight, closed-mouth smile put an exclamation point on the sentiment.  But Tina was determined: just because people thought she was a certain way didn't mean that she was, and if Mike liked her then that was all that mattered.  Mike not only liked her, he  _understood_ her, and there was no way she was going to lose that over his scowling Chinese mother who still thought they were connected via umbilical cord.  
  
The pleasantries were typical of this type of awkward dinner, which was a change from the previous dates' beginnings.  Before, it had always seemed as though Mike's mother was perfectly comfortable with the arrangement while Tina tried not to let show how nervous she was.  Now, though, the conversation came in fragments, with a passive-aggressive question that held a thousand accusations, Tina's awkward reply, a "Hm" or nod or response about what the Changs did that was far superior without ever using those words, then silence.   
  
"So Tina.  Your last name is also Chang."  It was a strange question, in part because Tina swore half of their classmates had the last name of either Chang or Zhang - when homerooms used to be divided by last name, it had taken two full homerooms out of six to get through the C's.  It became stranger still when, after she confirmed the fact, Mike's mom began to ask if she was related to practically each person in town - by name.  Did she think they shouldn't be together because they might be cousins?  She barely kept from giggling at the thought, even though she knew it was ridiculous.  For one thing, she wasn't related to anyone in town except her parents.  For another, even if they were related, they would hardly be the first ones - while that kind of close dating was not encouraged, and in fact was frowned-upon, it was kind of the nature of living in a small, insular community like that.  It happened with kids at synagogue, too: their parents wanted them to date someone Jewish, but there were only a handful of Jews in town.  
  
Tina had never understood what difference that made.  So what if someone was from the same culture?  She didn't care.  Her parents obviously didn't, considering they were from completely different backgrounds.  But apparently in some families, that mattered.  Good thing she was Asian, then - with questions like that, she doubted Mike's mother would let him date someone who wasn't.  
  
"No - we're not related to anyone else in town," Tina replied with as much brightness as she could muster.  
  
Mrs. Chang thought a moment, eyes narrowing a little as she studied Tina.  She was proud of herself for managing not to shift uncomfortably under the scrutiny.  "Where is your family from?"  
  
"California."  
  
"When did you get here?"  
  
That was an even stranger question.  She'd been in school with Mike for years, and they had been in dance class together practically since she moved.  She'd known Mike's family, at least in passing, practically forever.  "When I was six?"  
  
"And before that?  Before California?"  When Tina had no idea how to answer that, Mrs. Chang asked - also seemingly out of the blue, "Mike tells me he's been helping you with school.  That you don't speak Cantonese."  
  
She shot a sharp look over at Mike, because just because she didn't speak it didn't mean she wanted to sound dumb to his  _mother_.  He gave a tiny shake of his head, eyes wide, everything about him screaming 'I didn't say it like that,' which she could believe - she knew logically he was probably trying to help her, if anything.  He was probably trying to tell his mom that part of the reason she hated the family dates was because she didn't speak Mandarin because at least that was a reason in favour of separate outings that didn't lead his mother to believe they were planning on doing things that they weren't.  She knew he wasn't out to sabotage her or look like an idiot, but there was something so accusatory about the way she said it-  "Just that one class.  Otherwise we're pretty evenly matched."  Anything more than that would be bragging.    
  
She had a strange relationship with bragging.  Her father hated it - in his family, the way to show pride in your child's accomplishments was to insult them, to greet any compliments with a dismissal and say that she wasn't  _that_  good at whatever it was she was being praised for.  Her mother, on the other hand...Tina was convinced that the women at the synagogue and who hung out in the tiny Jewish bookstore all day had a full-time job praising their children.  Her mother couldn't wait for the day that she could brag that Tina was marrying a doctor.  She tended to fall somewhere in between; she wasn't going to go around telling everyone she was fantastic, but she wanted to be able to admit that she was good at certain things and recognize she was lousy at others.  She was horrible at science, but she hated brushing away all praise when she sang if she'd done well.  Just because she was her own worst critic didn't mean she wanted to put herself down even further.    
  
Mike's mom didn't seem to like that answer very much.  She probably didn't like bragging, she seemed even more old-fashioned than her uncles.  At least her father would explain things to her instead of just shutting down the conversation the way they did.  "So you don't speak Cantonese," she summarized.  
  
"No."  
  
"Mandarin?"  
  
"No."  She looked over at Mike, trying to figure out where this was going.  Should she say she knew Hebrew - would that help?  Probably not.  Her mom made it pretty clear that wasn't a good thing to spread around, even if she didn't really understand why.  He looked just as confused as she felt.  
  
Her eyes narrowed as she asked the next one.  "Japanese?"  She asked with such hatred and revulsion that Tina wondered if she was going to be sick all over the table.    
  
"No?"    
  
"Are you sure?  There was a Japanese family that moved into town about the time yours did, straight from internment.  We didn't let them stick around long."  
  
"I'm Korean," she said, but Mrs. Chang's face didn't soften.  
  
"You're not Chinese," she stated.  "We are.  That means something.  And while I'm sure you're a nice girl, I cannot-"  
  
"Mom," Mike interjected sharply.  Mrs. Chang looked over at him with surprise, and Tina wondered if he had ever spoken up against her even that much before.  "Don't.  Please."  
  
The Cantonese began flying fast and furious then, and she found herself feeling more sick by the minute.  Watching the two of them arguing over her, over whether she should be allowed to date Mike - because while Mrs. Chang hadn't said that, it was so clear that was what she meant by it-  
  
"I'm sorry," she said in a rush, quickly getting up to leave.  "I-I'll see you in...in school tomorrow-"  She could feel tears threatening and she didn't want to be known around town as not only the girl who made out with a boy in broad daylight, but as the girl who cried in the middle of restaurants.  Her black lace vest snagged on the carved wood decorations on the arm of the chair, and she yanked it away as she raced from the table.    
  
"Tina-   _wait_!" she could hear Mike call from behind her, but she couldn't be there.  She couldn't watch the two of them fight over her and every word from his mother being code for 'You're not good enough for  _my_  son because you're Korean.'  She couldn't.  
  
By the time she got home, her frustration and embarrassment had turned to anger.  How dare she?  How dare this woman who-  she didn't even  _know_  her, that was the entire point!  How could she say something like that?  Like she wasn't good enough to date her son because she didn't speak Cantonese.  Or Mandarin - though she had a hunch that even if she spoke Mandarin, that wouldn't be considered good enough.  What kind of standard was that, anyway?  Just because they were only allowed to go to school with other Asians didn't mean that they were the only ones worth talking to...and she  _was_  Asian!  What was her problem?    
  
"Tina? Sweetie, what's wrong?" her mother asked as soon as she walked into the kitchen.    
  
She didn't even know where to begin to explain what had happened.  She looked over at her parents, who were in the middle of eating dinner, the tears already starting to bubble up again in frustration.  She was starving and angry and ashamed even though she knew she had no reason to be.  She wanted to go to her room and sob and not have to go see him tomorrow because there was no way he was going to choose her over his mother's severe disapproval; he was too obedient a son for that.  
  
She decided to start from the ending.  
  
"She hates that I'm Korean," Tina stated angrily, almost slamming the fridge as she pulled out the pitcher of lemonade and set it on the counter.   
  
"What?"   
  
She began to tell the whole story then - how she had wanted to go on a date with Mike alone, how he had tried to get everyone into one last group dinner in the hopes that they could finally be like any normal American teenagers, how she had asked every language and ethnicity and glared at the prospect of Tina's fictional Japanese heritage.  How she had stared at her like she was an intruder in their lives - the same way people who were new to synagogue stared at her when she went with her mother, the way people in both white  _and_  coloured places in town stared at her and her father.   
  
By the time she finished, her mother was livid; her father was silent.  "This is just ridiculous.  I'm going to talk to her - this isn't right," her mother said, shaking her head and already reaching for her jacket.    
  
"No," her father said quietly.  
  
Mother and daughter turned to stare at him.  "What do you mean, no?" Tina asked, confused.  
  
"Are you saying she was right to-"  
  
"Of course not," he replied calmly.  "The way she treated Tina was wrong.  But it's not something either of us can fix."    
  
"Your mother used to hate me, now she likes me fine," she stated proudly.  
  
"It took her nearly a decade," he pointed out.  "Your mother still dislikes me."  
  
"Well, sure, you're not Jewish," she replied matter-of-factly.    
  
"And you're not Korean.  And Tina's not Chinese."  
  
"But why does anyone care?" Tina demanded frustratedly.  What did it matter to anyone?  She was Asian and white, technically - and technically, the lawyers were saying now, Asian was white anyway under Ohio law.  And who cared if three generations ago, her family was from some other part of Asia than Mike's family was two generations ago?  If her parents could be fine together except for fighting over pork dishes, and they had come from completely different continents, what did it matter?  "If I were trying to date a Jewish boy, his mother would say I was too Asian.  Mike's mother says I'm not Asian enough?  I can't win.  It's like fascism."  
  
Neither of them had a good answer, at least not one they could relay quickly, and an uneasy silence settled over the kitchen.  "Bess, I think Tina and I should talk alone for a few minutes," her father said quietly.  Her mother looked like she might protest, then thought better of it and nodded, giving Tina a quick hug as she left the room.  "Make tea," he instructed her gently, and Tina nodded.  She put the kettle on, then rifled through the cabinet until she found the  _Saenggang Cha_ , hoping the ginger would soothe her upset stomach.  
  
"I'm  sorry for what you went through tonight."  
  
"I just don't understand it.  Who cares?  We're both Asian, it's not even like people think I'm white.  Why-"  
  
"Because Asian is a misnomer," he replied.    
  
"What do you mean?"    
  
"It's like...well, it's like saying American.  Think about this town, the way it's divided.  The way people can't stand each other, and fight, and create divisions.  Just because people here think all Asian is the same...or think they know one kind of Asian from another, that they know Japanese from Chinese from Korean...it's not true."    
  
"But you don't act like you're better than they are," Tina pointed out as the tea kettle began to whistle.  She retrieved two cups from the cabinet and began to fix the tea.  "You don't say that I shouldn't date Mike because he's not Korean, or not Jewish - you married Mom even though she's not-"  
  
"I know," he replied.  "And if you think it's hard now, what your mother and I went through..." He smiled faintly to himself.  "I learned because I didn't have another choice.  Then I learned how difficult it was for people to see the difference between... Thank you," he said as she set the delicate teacup in front of him on the table and sat down across from him.  "It's harder for people like her.  When you're part of a group that's not like everyone else, and others keep getting grouped in with you even though you're not like them either, all because none of you are like the people in charge..."  She had no idea what he meant, and he could tell from her expression so he tried again.  "We are Korean - that's who we are.  We're more than that, too, but when people see you that's what they see."  He paused, as though awaiting confirmation that she understood that, and Tina nodded.  Obviously when someone saw her they knew she was Asian.  Being Jewish was easier to hide naturally for her; she didn't need black curtains to do it - her hair and eyes were sufficient.  Even if she didn't want to conceal it, it went unnoticed by people around her.  "They are Chinese - that's who they are.  We're two very different groups, we've had centuries of history next to one another.  We've had wars with one another.  We've had arguments and fights and killing that makes what goes on here look like nothing.  The same is true - maybe moreso right now - of the Japanese.  But when the white people see all of us, they see the same thing.  They pretend they can see a difference when they have to, but they see Asian.  That's all.  Or they call all of us Chinese. Or all of Japs.  His mother...she wants to be separate. She wants to be Chinese and nothing else, and she doesn't want people who aren't Chinese to be Chinese.  She sees us as just as different a people as-"  
  
"...as if I were all white," Tina supposed, and her father nodded.  "But...you did this.  You could figure it out.  I mean, you and Mom..."  
  
"It's the same but it's different, too.  My mother was afraid I would lose my culture, like his mother is.  To her, that was the worst thing that could happen to me, to lose that."  His voice was sad even though he had a little smile on his face, like he could remember the conversation as clearly as if it had just happened but had the benefit of perspective to know that the highly-charged emotions didn't matter so much.  "I never could explain to her that it was a choice.  I chose to give up some things.  So did your mother.  So will he, and so will you - whether you stay together or find other people. And so did my mother and father; they were born in this country and grew up completely differently from their parents, and they embraced being Korean-American instead of just being Korean.  Everyone does it.  It's just a lot more frightening to watch than to do because it happens so gradually..."  He gestured to indicate her, and she didn't even know what that was supposed to mean.    
  
Did he mean he felt like she had lost their culture, too?  She didn't  _feel_  like she had, she felt like still did all the things her parents raised her with.  Except for the parts she didn't like, the things she couldn't stand - she hated keeping Kosher.  She hated the long tea ceremonies on Korean New Year.  She was sick of kimchi all the time.  And sometimes, instead of having to go to bed early on Friday so she could go to synagogue and Chinese School in the morning, what she really wanted was to go to a movie with her friends, or go on a real date with Mike.  
  
But that was its own culture too, wasn't it?  Because she wasn't  _just_  Korean or  _just_  Jewish, she was American too.  Shouldn't she get to be like the rest of the kids in town?  Wasn't culture about the food people around you ate and the ways they spent their time and the rites of passage?  
  
"So what does it all mean?" she asked quietly, her head spinning.  
  
"It means it's complicated."  
  
"But...for me.  For Mike - does it mean I can't date him?  That we can't ever be together?"  He was the only boy who understood her, the only one who didn't look at her like she was crazy or scary for dressig the way she did, who understood her love of dance, who looked at her like she was incredible instead of ordinary.  Did't that count for something?  Did his mother-  
  
"That's up to him," he replied with a sad smile.  "I chose your mother.  I was also older than you are now."  
  
The thought of Mike choosing his mother and a heritage she didn't even know she wasn't part of, over her, turned her stomach again.  "Okay," she whispered, her eyes tearing up for what felt like the hundredth time.  "I...I think I'll just go to my room now, if that's okay."  
  
"Take your tea with you," he advised gently.  "It will help."  
  
"Thanks, Dad."  She stood, carrying her tea in the direction of her bedroom, but her father's voice stopped her.  
  
"You can lie, if you want," he said quietly, and she turned to face him with a curious expression.  "You can tell people you're Chinese."   
  
"I don't know any of the language, and all the food has strange sauces and parts - they eat chicken feet," she protested.   
  
He chuckled to himself and looked down with a shake of his head.  "I never did understand their love of chicken feet.  But then, my father's favourite snack is silkworm lavae - it's a delicacy.  We all do strange things."  
  
"Besides, his mom already knows."  
  
"Then...in the future.  Around here it would make things easier."  
  
She shrugged and went back to her room, trying not to think about what it was going to be like when Mike broke up with her tomorrow.    
  
Her father stopped making kimchi after that.  After a week of feeling like she'd won a vacation, she found she missed it.  
  
* * * * *  
  
The drive-in was busy, even for a Friday night.  It took awhile to find a space, and after Mike eased his car carefully between the other two he glanced over at her.  "This okay?" he asked, and she nodded.  
  
"Perfect," she replied.  He leaned over and kissed her softly, and she couldn't help but marvel at how lucky she was.  She had fully expected him to tell her that, while he liked her a lot, his mother was right - so much so that she had almost burst into tears when he had come up to her the next morning before class.  But he had said he didn't care, that he liked her, and that he loved when they danced together, and he wanted to take her out.  Alone this time - just the two of them.  
  
She opened the bag they had brought from the burger stand down the street and handed Mike his cheeseburger before retrieving her own.  It was still warm and greasy and smelled fantastic - and went great with the chilifries they were splitting and her chocolate milkshake.    
  
The prototypical American teenage evening.  Exactly what she had wanted.  
  
It felt like she should be ecstatic, but a part of her felt like she was betraying...something.  Not her parents, because they had made clear they were happy for her relationship - well, as much as any parents were about their daughter's date, she guessed.  And this was her culture, too, so it wasn't as though she were giving up herself for this.  In fact, she was being exactly who she was.  Plain and simple.  
  
So why did it feel so complicated?


End file.
